


Eventuality

by mousemind



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: End of the World, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousemind/pseuds/mousemind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The news breaks in the late morning, in an almost mundane way. Everyone is working, and then there's some rumblings about something strange online, which go mostly ignored.</p><p>But then it's on the news, and then it's on all the channels, and then every phone is flooded with a deluge of texts and alarms, and Richard can hear people on the street shouting, "look, look, turn on the television right now!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eventuality

**Author's Note:**

> Wonderful human [daisiestdaisy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/works) prompted this:  
> "Jared and Richard and a slow impending apocalypse (asteroid going to hit the earth on some date months from now or whatever). Because apparently I'm not satisfied with only one of them facing down certain death."
> 
> So if you're mad at me, keep in mind, we both get to share the blame!

Richard snaps awake from a nightmare that fades from his consciousness as quickly as it had appeared, unbidden and terrible. Richard pants, grasping at his chest like his heart might hammer out of it and onto his cheap bedsheets. 

Bright, white light is all he can recall. The light, and the profound dread, which he can't seem to shake, still.

He lies back and looks at the ceiling, trying to regain some semblance of normal breathing. There's still a tiny part of himself that feels like he ought to tear out of here screaming. Richard bemoans this strange by-product of all the recent stress; his waking life is frightening enough, as is.

Sleep overtakes him again, mercifully. The white light remains, but pulses behind his eyes in a way that is almost hypnotic, soothing.

\---

"Richard," Jared repeats, and Richard snaps his focus back to Jared with a pinned, feral look.

"Are you all right?"

Richard moves his mouth in a stuttering way, like he'd already begun to say something before his brain shifted gears.

"Yeah," Richard says, eventually, with apparent effort.

"You seem a bit distracted," Jared continues, trying not to pry. Richard exhales, and his entire posture seems to drain, to empty of air and all the tension he held.

"I don't feel great," he mutters, rubbing a nervous palm over the back of his neck.

Jared leans in. "Are you ill?"

"I dunno," he replies, "I feel - "

What Richard wishes he could say is, _I feel like there's a knife just behind me, and the only way to live is to not turn around to look at it, but the fear of not knowing might kill me, too._ But instead he says,

"Maybe I just need some sleep."

Jared closes his laptop right away.

"You've always needed more sleep," he retorts, with a wry but sympathetic smile. "I'll get out of your hair."

Richard considers asking Jared if he's ever felt like this; an implacable dread, for no apparent reason. But Jared is always so warmly, intensely concerned, it almost feels unfair to bother him over nothing at all.  
  
At night, he dreams of the white light again. It isn't a nightmare, really. In his dream he's saying _okay, okay,_ over the roar of something almost like a giant, churning ocean. But when he wakes before dawn his stomach roils with a cold, foreboding feeling, and he can't fall back asleep.

\---

The news breaks in the late morning, in an almost mundane way. Everyone is working, and then there's some rumblings about something strange online, which go mostly ignored.

But then it's on the news, and then it's on all the channels, and then every phone is flooded with a deluge of texts and alarms, and Richard can hear people on the street shouting, "look, look, turn on the television right now!"

A state of emergency has been declared. A comet that has become dislodged from its orbit - ( _a runaway_ , says something in Richard's consciousness, swimming, unbidden, to the surface) - and Earth is directly in its path. Every effort is being made to avoid this collision, which would cause certain destruction, should it the threat not be eliminated in about fifty-five days.

"Fuck me, that's not even two months," Erlich says, loudly, over the broadcast. Someone hushes him, and no one even squabbles over it.

They listen to the end of it in silence, sort of hunched around the television, stone-still. The official broadcast ends, and the television flashes back to a shaken-looking reporter, an open-faced blonde woman who can hardly hide her distress, even as she reads a teleprompter with expertly practiced professionalism.

"We. We've gotta go," Dinesh intones, breathlessly.

"No where to go," Gilfoyle responds, with what might have been a sarcastic jibe, but hollow of his characteristic bite.

Everyone dissipates and begins making phone calls.

Jared sits, somewhat stunned but relatively unshaken, in the center of the room. He doesn't even reach for his cellphone. Who would he call, when Richard is here in the room with him?

\---

"Okay, mom. Uh-huh. I'll see you soon."

There's a hitch in his voice that Jared recognizes all too well; Richard is crying. Jared wonders if it's polite to leave the room before Richard can make it down the hallway. Give him some privacy, spare him some embarrassment.

"Yeah. I love you, too."

It's too late. Richard shuffles heavily into the living room just as he ends his phone call, Jared still sitting at the table where Richard had last seen him hours ago.

"You're still here," Richard states, a little congested and hoarse from crying.

"Sorry," Jared says, resisting the urge to offer Richard his handkerchief. "I was thinking."

"Yeah, for sure," Richard replies, vaguely. He nods and shoves his phone in his pocket. "About what?"

"I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon," Jared answers. Richard looks caught somewhere between horrified and bemused.

"Better go, then, I guess," Richard shrugs, something like a laugh rumbling just under his words. He wipes at his wet eyes with the back of his hand. "Nothing to lose."

Richard sits near him at the table, turned towards him in an uncharacteristically open way. Jared thinks he should say something, maybe suggest some food or a chance to talk, but he watches Richard's expression shift to something inward and frightened.

"Jared," Richard says, with apparent effort. "I know this sounds... sounds just insane. But I _knew_."

Jared tries not to recoil, but the shock must be apparent on his face from the way that Richard winces apologetically. Jared manages to ask, as calmly as possible,

"Sorry?"

"No, I mean, I didn't know. Not all of it. Not the - the comet, and fifty-five days, and - " Richard amends, too quickly, stuttering over his words like he fears Jared might upend a table and tear away. Jared lays a hand on Richard's shoulder, lightly, and he continues, 

"But I couldn't sleep, this whole week. I could feel that..." He swallows. "That something was wrong."

"I'm sorry," Jared says, for lack of anything better to say. "You shouldn't have to deal with that alone. I wish you'd told me."

Richard does laugh, then. It's harsh, and sharp, but it's a laugh.

"And say, what? That I felt like the world was gonna end?"  
  
Jared shakes his head, squeezes Richard's shoulder before pulling his hand away, before he follows the urge to touch some other soft, lovely part of Richard that he should not.

"Just that you needed help," Jared answers. "I hope you know you can tell me anything."

"Yeah, Jared," Richard assents, a bit embarrassed. "I do."

Richard looks at Jared's hands, folded politely on the table between them. There's something he's always liked about Jared's wrists. Which is, objectively, a strange thought to harbor about anyone. Most especially about Jared, who touches Richard in gentle, careful ways that would almost be intimate if he were... well, were anyone else, Richard supposes.

"I, um. I have to go home for a bit," Richard manages, clearing his throat. "See my parents."

"Of course," Jared says, with a solemn nod.

"Are you -- where are you planning on going?"

"Oh," Jared replies, clearly surprised. He folds and unfolds his hands, and Richard can't help but watch. "I don't know. Perhaps I really will take that trip. See the Grand Canyon."

"Yeah," Richard persists, unsure of how to say what he really means to say. "But where, you know, _after_?"

The intention is received. Jared's expression falls, but Richard watches him valiantly piece himself back together in the span of a few seconds, watches Jared consciously will himself to smile.

"I suppose I'll come back here," Jared says. Richard's stomach turns at the thought of Jared in an empty house - one that's hardly his own, doesn't even have a bed here -  waiting for a profoundly unfair end.

"You should go, you know," Richard persists, feeling a braveness engendered by a fond sort of pity. "See what you want to see. Really like, live it up."

Jared beams at him, really genuinely this time.

"Yes, Richard," he agrees amenably. "I think I'd like to."

"Good, yeah," Richard says, nodding a bit too forcefully. "I'm, um. It's good to hear."

There isn't much Richard knows about Jared's life outside of Pied Piper, but he does know that Jared didn't return to any sort of home for Thanksgiving, or holidays, and he never seems to make personal phone calls.

"You could come with me, if you wanted," Jared says, looking pointedly away. Then, he shakes his head, angry with himself. "What am I -- you're going back to your family. What a stupid thing to say."

Jared pinches his own arm, just above his wrist, almost scoldingly. It seems like an old, bitter habit.

"Jared," Richard says quickly, attempting to halt him before it goes much further. He feels a hot, sharp sort of unease at witnessing Jared briefly unravel like that. "Jared, hey, that sounds good."

"Richard, I'm embarrassed," Jared confesses, immediately. "When you suggested that I do what I've always wanted to do..."

Jared huffs a small, uncomfortable laugh.

"Richard, what I really want to do is kiss you."

Neither of them know what to say in that moment, in the wake of that admission. Richard vaguely hopes his jaw hasn't dropped; it seems rude to gape back at a person who'd just confessed their feelings for you. Jared, for his part, looks chagrined, but not entirely unhappy, eyes downcast.

"Sorry," he apologizes, reflexively. "It's a silly thing to say. Selfish. But I suppose there's not much time left."

He lifts his head and looks at Richard, straight on.

"I've wanted to kiss you for a very long time. As long as I've known you, maybe." Jared nods, then, like the punctuation on a sentence. "That's all. You don't need to say anything about that."

"Jared," Richard rasps. He lays a hand on top of Jared's on the table, and Jared's eyes widen in a way that conveys a bit of hopefulness, tamped down by dread. Richard's mouth is suddenly dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. But he still manages to ask, with a bit of wryness, a blush creeping up his neck,

"That long?"

Jared makes a sound that isn't quite a sob, like a laugh half surprised out of him.

"Yes," he confirms. He leans in, just a bit, testing the limits of this impossible, wonderful fantasy. Richard, with shaking hands, splays his palm across the back of Jared's neck.

"I look at your wrists a lot," Richard says, however dumb it may sound.

"Oh," Jared replies. "Thank you."

And suddenly they're kissing, across the small corner of the table, until Richard is in Jared's lap, one hand under his sweater and the other fisted in his hair. Jared kisses in such a fantastically paradoxical way; both desperately and gently, efficiently but graciously.

They're both the kind of men who would otherwise - maybe under different circumstances - object to finding themselves on the floor of Richard's bedroom, unable to even make it to the bed before their pants have been shucked carelessly halfway across the room.  
  
"Jared," Richard pants into the crook of Jared's neck as Jared slides his hand across the small of Richard's back. "I've, um. I've never been with another man before."

Jared stills, but keeps Richard pressed close.

"Have you?"

"Yes," Jared answers.

"Oh." Richard resents how embarrassed he sounds, even in that one word.

"But never one I've been in love with," Jared says, touching Richard at the soft, tender space just behind his ear. Richard shudders, digs his fingernails into the tops of Jared's shoulders, and whispers Jared's name over and over as Jared kisses down the length of his body, his hipbones, the insides of his thighs....

\---

"When do you leave?"

They're still entangled on the floor of Richard's bedroom, though they've managed to regain boxers and a comforter to lay on. Jared continues to press small, satisfied kisses to the length of Richard's jaw, his hair, the tops of his ears, as if the hunger has subsided into a dull buzz of thankful disbelief.

"I was going to take tomorrow to get stuff in order, like, go to the bank and buy a ticket and stuff. And then leave for Tulsa the next day."

"I can help, if you need," Jared suggests, ignoring an impending dread that creeps, icy, up his spine.

"There might not be flights back here," Richard says, as if confirming the worst. "I don't think people will still be... um, you know. Doing their jobs. Closer to the end."

"Yes," Jared says, attempting to sound no particular way. Richard shifts a bit in his arms, lifting himself onto one elbow.

"But then I wouldn't be able to see you again."

"It's important that you see your family, Richard," Jared says, not quite looking at him. "You know that."

"So come with me," Richard blurts out. His ears immediately turn red, his lips pressed tight in that familiar, nervous way.  
  
"To Tulsa?"

"We'll see the Grand Canyon on the way," Richard continues. He looks supremely hopeful, expectant. It's a brief glimpse of a Richard unfettered by stress, a Richard before lawsuits and unceremonious oustings and too many sleepless nights. Jared is a little bit in love with this Richard, too. Perhaps is in love with all possible iterations of Richard, seen and unseen.

"We could take my car," Jared supplies. Richard swoops down and kisses him again, perhaps a little carelessly. Jared almost can't believe a world this wonderful could possibly end.

\---

They emerge from Richard's room and it's already dark. _A day wasted_ , Richard thinks at first, then, scoldingly, recalls the impossible and fantastic occurrences of the day and tallies it as a victory. Richard has shrugged on on old sweatshirt, but Jared is stuck in his disheveled clothes. There's something Richard finds endearing about the way Jared's collar won't lay flat, though Jared seems a little more concerned about the image he's projecting.

Jared starts tucking his crumpled shirt more fully into his pants when he realizes the living room is full of people.

"Look who's finally decided to grace us with their presence," Erlich says, tipping his beer towards them a little too enthusiastically, as a bit sloshes out of the top.

"It's late, we've been out here all day."

"We're drinking," Dinesh states, quite obviously.

"We're getting End of the World drunk," Gilfoyle amends, not unhelpfully. He clinks his glass against the side of Dinesh's in an uncharacteristically companionable way.

Richard clears his throat and says, "sounds good" though Richard is certain he doesn't know anymore what is or isn't worth his time, the little he has left. But they're red-faced and laughing and relaxed, and it feels a bit like earlier, simpler times, so he sits down on the couch opposite.

"You look like shit," Erlich says, pointing an accusatory finger towards Jared. "What, were you two fucking?"

Richard tucks his legs up to his chest and looks over at Jared, hanging back politely in the doorway, still clearly waiting for an explicit invitation before he dares to have any sort of fun at all. It's so sweet, and so pathetic, and makes Richard love him even more in retrospect for all those times Jared waited just in the periphery for Richard, no matter what.

"Um, yeah," Richard answers. 

"Cool," Gilfoyle says, and gets up and pours another very tall glass of tequila. "Get some alcohol."

Jared pours Richard a reasonable glass of vodka - knows him well enough to know that tequila is entirely off the table - and sits beside him on the couch.  
  
"You should, uh, have some," Richard offers, tentatively. He sort of forgets if Jared doesn't drink; if that's a thing about him. It makes him feel a little guilty, knowing so much of Jared is still unexplored, and fifty four days isn't enough time.

"Oh, no thank you, not if I'm driving tomorrow," Jared politely deflects.

"Driving," Dinesh asks, in a somewhat demanding way. "Where?"

"I'm," Richard begins, and quickly corrects himself, "We're going to Tulsa, back to my family for a bit."

"We're going to see the Grand Canyon," Jared adds, chipper as ever. "I've never been."

"It's cool, for a hole in the ground," Gilfoyle concedes. "You'll like it."

Jared smiles and exhales, "thank you, Gilfoyle" and is perhaps so pleasantly taken aback by the lack of a demeaning retort from anyone in the room that he accepts the beer he's handed and knocks back a significant amount of it in one swig.

"You missed Monica, earlier," Erlich says. "We didn't know you were home or we would've, y'know, dragged you assholes out of bed."

"Monica," Richard says, surprised. "Was she leaving?"

"Yeah, she's going to meet Peter Gregory's family, up in Redding. Apparently her own family is like, super out of the picture, but they were always pretty good to her," Dinesh explains.

"That's sweet," Jared says, one large hand splayed over his heart. "That's so lovely to hear."

Tears immediately well up in his eyes, and Jared makes a choked little noise. 

"I wish I'd known her a little better."

Richard touches his knee, quickly, then pulls his hand away.

"Hey," he whispers, "don't, um. Don't cry. It's okay."

"Let him cry," Erlich orders, sort of grandly. "It's the end of the fucking world, Richard."

\---

They have as close to a heartfelt goodbye as they can manage, being who they are, but it feels right. Erlich, especially, crushes Richard in a long embrace and says, "you're great, kiddo, you've always been great."

Then, they're in the car, and Jared is showing off his binoculars, which he can't wait to use once they get to the Grand Canyon. Richard snaps his seatbelt on.

"That's cool," Richard says, only vaguely aware of what Jared is saying about wildlife and much more caught up in the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles. Palo Alto disappears behind them, perhaps for the very last time.

Richard is a bit embarrassed to admit he hadn't considered the rest of the world, in a way. He's taken aback by the immense traffic near the major cities; desperate people seeking to leave, hoping to enter, looking for family and friends and resources or maybe just an escape like their own. Then, as the California greenery dwindles along with the population, the world begins to look eerily abandoned. A premonition, in a sick way, of what's to come.

They need gas, but pass three abandoned rest stops before finally coming upon a small outpost manned by one gentleman, brusque and blisteringly drunk. He refuses them service, seemingly for the hell of it, until Jared presses a crisp one-hundred dollar bill into the man's palm with an uncharacteristic doggedness. At Richard's stunned expression, Jared merely shrugs, instantly back to the unassuming, undemanding Jared he knows.

"What do I need it for," he reasons, offhandedly. "It's a small price, in the end."

Richard wonders if Jared can hear the doom in those words, is aware of the dark joke he inadvertently made, but instead climbs back into the car in silence, thankful for the gas.  
  
They make it over eight hours, sharing the driving, before the thrill of escape dwindles into something like skittish exhaustion and they need to stop. Every highway motel is abandoned, dark, some boarded up already. A weather-worn sign reads Newberry Springs, the paint peeling away like old cicada shells.

Jared pulls the car up on a shoulder of an off-road and turns to Richard apologetically, like a scolded dog. 

"I'm sorry, I don't think I can drive any more, and it seems like there's no place to rent a room - "

"So we'll sleep in the car," Richard answers, amenably, "I don't care."

Richard can't even remember the last time he said "I don't care" and genuinely meant it. Everything seems ridiculously futile now; the idea of letting Jared go another second tearing himself up about not procuring a shitty hotel bed seems almost cruel.

They make out in the back seat of the car like furtive teenagers. Despite the small space and uncomfortable angles, Jared still manages to finish Richard off in his hand. Richard shouts and moans in a way he couldn't back at the house, and every time he watches something hungry and pleased flash across Jared's face. Richard distantly wonders if Jared can peer into his long-forgotten adolescent fantasies, or if he's just remarkably good at discerning what makes Richard tick.

They clamber back into the front seats in a worn-out, satiated haze to wait for sunrise.

\---

Jared awakes to a tapping on the car window, loud and insistent. He fumbles in the dark, bringing his seat upright again. 

He doesn't recognize the face in the window; a relatively young man with close-cut hair, sunken and ghostly-looking, with dark eyes and weathered skin.

His focus is impenetrable, boring daggers into Jared, as he keeps tapping on the window. Jared rolls it down a crack, but the man persists, knocking away until Jared almost has the window fully open.

"Hello," Jared rasps, still stumbling into consciousness. For a moment he thinks this man might be with the police, until he considers there's little chance policemen are still patrolling state highways just for the sake of morality.

"Where are you headed," the man asks, skipping any of the expected pleasantries. Richard stirs in the seat beside him; he hears him ask "Jared?" in a thin, alarmed voice and Jared fights to suppress a vicious swell of adrenaline and possessiveness.

"Doesn't matter," Jared hedges. "We needed a bit of rest, but we're going now."

Jared slides the key into the ignition and turns, just in case. The longer the man is at the window, the more certain Jared is that he is high on something; he crackles with manic energy one second and then sways, dizzy and lethargic, the next. 

"You've got money," the man barks, and Jared isn't fully certain if it's a question or a demand. It isn't worth the games, Jared reasons. He has experience with men like him, who want to draw out these terrible, inevitable conclusions. So Jared pulls a wad of cash out of his wallet wordlessly and offers it up, without protest.  
  
"Fuck," he hears Richard hiss, just under his breath. Richard can see from where he sits that Jared is parting with nearly five hundred dollars. The man pockets it quickly, still hardly managing to break eye contact.

"And you," the man says, turning finally to Richard.

"He doesn't have anything," Jared answers, instantaneously. Richard is thankful for that - for countless reasons, he supposes - but most pressingly because Richard doesn't think he could properly form words in this moment.

"Liar," the strange man hisses, pulling a small pistol from his hip. He trains it on Richard, but in a sloppy, desperate way. 

Richard jerks fully upright, bile rising in his throat, and tries to swallow back the terrified yelp that bubbles out of him.

"He doesn't have money on him," Jared insists, again, his voice barely wavering.

"Yeah?" The man challenges, baring his teeth. "Let him outta the car and I'll search him. That'll settle it."

No one moves, for a moment. Richard looks to Jared, who is mostly turned away, and mostly unreadable, save for his hands clenching and unclenching in his lap. Richard first thinks he should get out of the car, then, darkly, what does it matter if he never gets to the Grand Canyon when it's all ending soon, anyway?

In the absence of a decision, the pale man barks a wordless, animalistic sound and shoves the gun further in through the window.

"Move it, Curly. Out of the car," he bellows. Richard cowers and reaches for the door handle. He misses, in that moment, how Jared managed to seize the man's arm and twist it, but at the sound of pained shouting Richard looks back to see Jared's hands gripped hard around the intruder's arm. It's somehow bent at an inhuman looking angle, his face contorted in agony. Jared yanks the wrenched arm down against the bottom of the open window, knocking the gun loose from his already-compromised grip. There's a sickening cracking noise, and the stranger hollers as he stumbles away, his arm limp at his side.

Jared shifts the car into gear and tears away, onto the abandoned highway, driving at a breakneck speed with both hands tight on the wheel.

"Holy shit, Jared." Richard exhales, his voice high and panicked. "Holy shit."

Jared shakes his head almost imperceptibly, never taking his eyes off the road.

"Are you all right," Jared asks, his voice atypically toneless, grave.

"Yeah, Jared, are _you_?" Richard persists. Jared nods, a little.

"Yes," he replies. "It was foolish of us to rest there. We won't stop again. I'm sorry."

Richard chokes on the words as they leave his mouth, his hands stuttering in the air in front of him,

"No, Jared, you don't -- I mean, _fuck._ I can't believe you were able to - to do that."

Jared suddenly looks a bit sick, his stern expression melting into something a little remorseful, distant.

"I wish I hadn't," he says, quietly. He casts a disdainful look down, for a moment, at the gun that had fallen into his lap. Richard, sort of reflexively, snatches it up and pushes it into the glove compartment in front of him.

"The man. He was - you know, you can tell," Jared deflects with difficulty, seemingly weighty with something like guilt. "People who are afraid. Who are going to drink and such to forget what's coming."

Jared taps a nervous hand on the side of the wheel.

"They don't have anyone else to - to face this with."

"Yeah," Richard agrees, for lack of anything better to say. Jared's right. Jared usually is. Richard supposes if anyone could muster instantaneous sympathy for their would-be attacker, it would be Jared.

"I won't let anyone harm you, Richard," Jared attests, with grave earnestness. It's the kind of sentence that doesn't seem to exist in real life, Richard thinks, but here Jared is saying it, insisting it, and Jared doesn't lie. 

Richard's instinct is to deflect; to say, _you don't have to do that,_ or _well, we're gonna die soon, anyway_ , but instead Richard says,

"Thanks."

Jared smiles, exhales both stress and relief, 

"Um, me too," Richard adds, and there's a shooting star when he looks back out the window, which strikes him as beautiful and maybe a little perverse and mocking. "I mean, I'd never let -- you know. Me too."

\---

They make it to the Grand Canyon just after sunrise, the place bathed in a dreamlike, pink glow. Jared is overcome by something Richard hasn't seen in him before; a solemnity, a quiet awe. He is content to lead, doesn't compulsively check in with Richard that every step, every decision, is fine by him.

Richard loses track of time, really. He follows Jared up and down trails, standing at cliffsides for what feel like maybe hours at a time, though judging by the sun's trajectory that can't possibly be true.

"Thank you," Jared says, eventually, taking Richard's hand. "Look what you've given me."

"I didn't -- I mean, you know, it was your idea, really," Richard fumbles, taken aback. But Jared just squeezes his hand again, more firmly, and exhales a long, satisfied breath.

"You know what I mean," Jared says. Richard does.

\---

Tulsa welcomes them with mild weather and wide, blue skies.

It's strange, Jared thinks, approaching a house you've never been in before, lived in by a family you've never met, knowing full well you might spend the last days of your life here.

Richard nearly bounds up the front steps, into his mother's arms. She holds him and speaks into his messy hair - something muffled Jared can't discern from where he's hung back at the bottom of the stairs - and when she pulls away her eyes are glistening with tears. Jared finds the whole thing sort of enviable and astonishing, coming home to someone who loves you so deeply, so irrevocably. But she opens her arms to Jared in much the same way, and holds him, too. Jared nearly dissolves right there, would be both humbled and accepting to let the world end in that moment.

Richard's father takes their bags for them, offers food and drinks and an unending list of comforts. All Richard wants is to change into some of his old clothes and sit with them in the living room, which they do, for hours.

Days, even.

On the TV, there are riots, robberies, violence all across the globe. Richard thinks of the man in the dark at their car window. Luckily, their small street - wedged between a park and a creek and easily fifteen minutes from the nearest city hub - remains untouched.

They watch movies together. Richard's father cooks like they're royalty and makes jokes about spending down his entire life savings on turkey breast. Jared spends afternoons birdwatching and taking notes in a small, green leather notebook that Richard's mother found and instantly gifted him. It's an unfair glimpse into a reality that shouldn't exist - wouldn't exist at all if it hadn't been for such monstrous circumstances - but is so close to Richard's ideal life that it aches in a profound, undeniable way.

By the thirteenth day, they all notice that the sky is a little lighter at night than it normally should be. It leaves them feeling hollow and spooked, even as Mr. Hendriks puts on a brave face suggests a card game.

Richard has another nightmare that night: bright light and a deafening roar. Jared is beside him when Richard startles awake, hushing him, stroking where his hair meets the nape of his neck and murmuring, "it's a dream, it's a dream, don't worry" even though Richard knows it's isn't really a dream at all so much as grim reminder of what's to come. Richard says "I love you" for the first time that night, and Jared holds him close.

On the fourteenth day, Richard goes on a tear and throws everything in his room - old pictures on the shelves, books, sun-bleached trinkets and figurines - into a giant trash bag. Jared can hear things breaking and snapping, but Richard doesn't stop. He shoves three old yearbooks on to the top of the pile, even though the bag begins to rip.

"Richard," Jared placates, gently, reaching for his shaking hands. Richard bats him away, perhaps a little too violently.

"Look, Jared, it doesn't matter," Richard snaps, tossing an old scale model of the Hubble space telescope into the mess. "It's ending, it's all fucking ending. I don't need this shit."

Jared threads his arms around Richard's waist.  
  
"Darling," he pleads. "Darling."

Richard dissolves into vicious, angry sobs. Jared presses him close to his chest and lets Richard cry himself hoarse, until Jared's shirt is more wet than not, and Richard is so out of breath he has no choice but to calm down again.

"It's going to be gone," Richard barely manages, his stuttering breath barely allowing the words out, "All of it. This, and my family, and us."

"Yes," Jared answers, feeling too exhausted and frightened to lie. He dips down and kisses Richard's neck.  
  
"But we're here now."

They spend that night and a good portion of the fifteenth day in bed together, trying to be quiet with varying degrees of success.

I like when you pull my hair a little, Richard confesses.

Everything you're doing is wonderful, but I don't like to feel held down, Jared guides, gently.

On the sixteenth day Richard's sister Winnie arrives with her new husband. They mention they aren't quite sure when they'll make the drive back to Oklahoma City. They never do, and without much fanfare move into the guest room in the basement.

Day nineteen is spent poring over old family photos, all together. Vacations, graduations, Winnie dolled up in her school play looking miserable. It takes hours, and still Jared could've sat through more. 

Jared is particularly taken by a photo of Richard as a teenager - no older than sixteen, he'd wager - hunched over an old computer console in his bedroom. He's drawn up, legs tucked against his chest in the chair, biting nervously at his thumb on his left hand. Jared has seen him like this countless times, so many years later. But here, Richard is nothing but spindly limbs and sharp angles in an oversized shirt and faded flannel pants. And Jared thinks, _he was a genius back then, too_ , but doesn't say it aloud.

Jared apologizes that he doesn't have anything to share in return, though, secretly, he would be hesitant to share the little he does have even if it were readily available. Jared has only managed to hang on to three photos. The first is a candid shot of his young mother, her thin, dark hair pulled up into a wispy bun as she bends over a pottery wheel. She has large ears and wide, blue eyes, like Jared's. He loves this picture; keeps it wedged between the pages of his favorite book and has traveled with it for years. The other two he reasons he could do without. The first is of Jared standing in front of his first dorm building at Vassar, his arms full of books, and the second is a school portrait from the fourth grade. Jared has a black eye. He'd have thrown it away a long time ago if he didn't secretly fear he'd forget what he looked like as a child.

Richard seems to have gleaned some of Jared's turmoil. Richard is observant when he wants to be, which is more than ever now. It's flattering in a way, though it does put Jared out of his element. It's hard, that night, when Richard pulls the blanket a little closer around them and says,

"You liked looking at all those stupid pictures, huh?"

Jared knows what's coming.  
  
"Yes," he still answers, truthfully. "I loved it."

Richard doesn't quite meet Jared's eyes.  
  
"I don't know anything about you," Richard says, his voice tight. So Jared tells him. Not everything, but enough.

The sky at night gets lighter and lighter. By the fortieth day in Tulsa, it never really gets fully dark anymore, and they have to put up heavy shades in the windows.

The world goes to shit, incrementally. The rioting increases. Towns and cities go abandoned. Richard hears that people are raiding pharmacies and hospitals for pills - anything they can take before the comet comes, anything to end a life on your own terms.

It's the forty-third day in Tulsa - seven days until the world ends - when Richard pulls Jared aside. Richard tries to stay calm, but immediately fumbles over his word and begins to cry.

"I don't think I can be here," Richard stutters. "With them. When it - um. When."

Richard looks down the stairway to where his family all sit in the den, playing cards while his father improvises lightly at the piano.

"I understand," Jared comforts, and Richard seems relieved that he doesn't need to say the words aloud. Jared wipes Richard's wet face for him, kisses him just below his temple.

"Let's be with them now," he suggests, kindly. "We can tell them later."

They leave the next day. There's nowhere to get gas in the area, so they end up in Winnie's car, with an extra can of gas in the back, courtesy of their next door neighbor. The goodbye is terrible, but there's an unspoken agreement that it shouldn't be protested.

Richard is in tears for most of the car ride home. But every few hours he looks up at Jared with a strange look, sort of pinched and thoughtful but also relieved, and says, "I love you."

\---

Palo Alto is largely abandoned, when they return. There are less than five days until the end of the world. Jared wonders where these people all go.

They stumble, exhausted, into the house with all their bags. 

"Oh. Fuckin' A. It's just you two."

Erlich stands in the middle of the foyer with a baseball bat in hand. Alarmed, Richard drops everything he was holding.

"You're here," Richard stammers, incredulously.

"We thought you'd gone to Santa Barbara, to be with your family," Jared says. Erlich shrugs a bit, suddenly looking not quite at either of them.  
  
"A man should be in his own home when, well," he blusters somewhat hollowly. He doesn't finish his sentence. What he doesn't want to admit is that his happiest memories are here, in this run-down den. It's a thought that Jared can vaguely intuit, however, as he feels much the same way.

Jared hugs him, which Erlich protests half-heartedly but makes no move to halt.

Four days before the end, the three of them walk around the entirety of their neighborhood. They laugh a lot, more than Jared can ever recall laughing in his whole life. That night, looters see their lights on in the den and smash in a window. Erlich fends them off with wild, frightening aggression, but they still sit in the dark for the rest of the evening. Jared doesn't sleep, and mostly watches Richard fade in and out of consciousness until sunrise.

The lights don't turn back on, that morning. Power's out, worldwide, says the garbled broadcast on Erlich's old, battery-powered radio. Three days until the end. Jared tells Richard all the things he'd been too frightened to admit the last time Richard had asked about his past. Richard does a good job not crying, but for the first time, Jared does not.

They spend the night on Richard's floor again, just like that first night, and the intimacy is just as exciting, just as cathartic and tender and important as that first time.  
  
"The moment I met you," Jared whispers, stutteringly, as he digs desperate, scrambling fingers into Richard's hips, "I wanted to be with you."

It's the kind of grand, beautiful thing Jared would say even if it weren't the end of the world.

"You're the only person I've ever been in love with," Richard confesses, and he runs his fingers through Jared's hair, brushes the skin above Jared's collarbone with his thumb, kisses him just at the underside of his jaw. All the things Jared likes. Richard has never been a generous person; he knows this. Not the way Jared is attentive and giving of himself in all possible ways. But for tonight, at the least, he gives Jared everything he can, and revels in the ways Jared comes apart underneath him.

\---

It isn't two days. It was a miscalculation.  
  
It's going to happen today.

That's what the radio says. That's what people on the street shout.

It's going to happen today.

Erlich is strangely calm. He spends the morning in the pool out back, and gazes sort of defiantly up at the sky. It gets too bright to look at, after a while.

Erlich removes pills from the front pocket of his robe and places them on the table. Richard's stomach roils, violently.

"To make you sleep," Erlich explains, though he doesn't need to.

"Yes," Jared replies, hollowly, not quite answering any question.

"I'm gonna," Erlich continues. "I don't want to - "

His sentence ends there, suddenly.

Richard wrings his hands and exhales through his teeth, finding it almost impossibly difficult to summon up the courage to say,

"I don't want to."

"You don't know what it'll be like, buddy," Erlich says, his voice low and even and shockingly patient. "If it'll hurt, or," 

He exhales, puts a hand on Richard's shoulder.

"You just don't know what it'll be like."

Richard feels Jared's hand rest on his thigh.

"Yeah," Richard replies. "I know. I just. I can't."

Jared squeezes Richard's leg, then, and joins in,

"I won't need any either, thank you, Erlich."

Erlich doesn't protest. He claps Jared on the back and kisses the top of Richard's head, and then disappears with a bottle of scotch and his pills.

Richard feels, in that moment, like the last two men in the world.

In a way, it's true. In their small world, the strange and inevitable microcosm of Richard and Jared, they are the sole survivors.

"If you wanted to take them, you could've. The pills, I mean," Richard stammers, apologetically. "I don't mind."

"Not at all," Jared deflects. He exhales deeply, then kisses Richard's cheek. "I want to be awake. With you."

"Until the end," Richard supplies, sort of ridiculously. But Jared doesn't scoff. He nods and curls a gentle, grounding hand around the back of Richard's neck. 

"I feel so selfish," Jared says. "I want so much more time with you."

They find their way to the floor of Richard's room, again. The light through his window is impossibly, terrifyingly bright. They don't speak, really. They don't need to.

Richard is strangely unsurprised when the eerie, deafening rushing noise begins, like a roaring ocean, like a jet taking off. Jared tenses and holds Richard closer to him.

"Oh," Jared gasps. "Richard. I'm scared."

Richard, for perhaps the first time in his life, isn't nervous at all. He kisses Jared, lays his hand gently over Jared's eyes and tells him to keep them closed. It's not going to be much longer. He's going to be with him until the end.


End file.
